What does your morning coffee have to do with your DNA?

What does your morning coffee have to do with your DNA? I recently had my DNA sequenced by 23andme. Along with useful health information and ancestry reports, I learned a few interesting things about myself. One of those things is that I’m a slow caffeine metabolizer.

Given my sensitivity to caffeine, I wasn’t exactly shocked that it takes a long time for coffee to get out of my system. But what I didn’t know was while people who are fast metabolizers of caffeine can see health benefits from drinking coffee, slow metabolizers don’t.

Slow metabolizers of caffeine who also drank at least two to three cups of coffee per day had a significantly increased risk of a non-fatal heart attack, according to research, while, according to other studies, fast metabolizers could actually reduce their heart attack risk by drinking coffee. -23andme blog

How do you react to caffeine? Does a single cup of coffee keep you up all night or can you pound espresso without consequence?

Interested in getting 23andme results yourself? Learn more here. Full disclosure: if you order a kit through this link, I will get a small Amazon gift certificate to help fund my book obsession and it will cost you nothing.

Leave a Reply:

Never did like the taste of coffee–even in tiramasu or coffe-ice cream. But I do drink green and white teas. However, I have found that if I drink a store-bought iced tea (black, generally) in mid day, it will keep me awake all night. I just thought I was odd. Now I find I have a category-slow metabolizer.

Leave a Reply:

I don’t drink coffee — never have liked the taste. drink tea, though, both the full strength sort when I travel and a bit more diluted when I’m at home. just straight up black or green tea, too, hot ot iced, no milk, no sugar, very occasionally a dash of lemon, lime, or orange. interesting to see all these statistics — and that coffee drinking is *so* common. I’m not exactly surprised, but it helps explain why people are sometimes taken aback when I don’t want coffee..Kerry Dexter recently posted..Autumn music

Leave a Reply:

I’d put money on me being a slow metabolizer. Even 1 cup of regular coffee can make me anxious. Even if I have it in the morning, I often have trouble sleeping at night. I do like coffee, and I do sometimes have it, but not much at all … compared to some folks.Roxanne recently posted..Canine Heart-Related Heartache

Leave a Reply:

Hmm. I’ve wondered about this because of the different studies that suggest that coffee is healthy and then other studies don’t. My mom drank at least 4 POTS of coffee per day and she was a whirlwind all of the time, she lived to 82 and was very healthy. Mine is a very slow one, so YIKES for me on these results.Living Large recently posted..Fall in Photos at Our Little House

Leave a Reply:

Fascinating! I only started drinking lattes a few years ago because I like the flavor and texture. But the caffeine doesn’t do anything to me. I could drink an espresso before going to sleep; no problem. My friend has to have three cups first thing in the morning just to wake up. Go figure.

Leave a Reply:

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

merr
-
October 9, 2013

I don’t drink much coffee and recently quit the little amount I had enjoyed – and I did enjoy it, particularly iced coffee. But I was reading about the half-life of coffee, and how long it stays potent in the system after some heart palps…and I decided to step back from it. Does that make me a fast or slow metabolizer, I wonder.
Maybe I’ll enjoy an occasional decaf, iced and diluted, but little more.